Trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. (Photo courtesy archives of Terence Blanchard)

The Society of Composers & Lyricists will honor composers Terence Blanchard and John Corigliano when they are each inducted as SCL Ambassadors while legendary composer Elliot Lawrence has been designated recipient of the SCL Award of Merit. The ceremony will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 11 at The NYIT Auditorium 1871 Broadway Avenue in New York City during the SCL annual holiday gala.

Past SCL Ambassador inductees include Dave Grusin, Burt Bacharach, David Shire, Johnny Mandel, Earl Hagen, James Newton Howard, Mike Post, Randy Newman, Alan Silvestri, Mark Isham, Paul Williams, Thomas Newton, Hal David and Diane Warren. A concerto highlighting some of the music of the honorees will also be included. According to SCL President Ashley Irwin, “The SCL Ambassador Award was created to recognize and acknowledge a select group of composers and lyricists who have made significant contributions; through their creativity, our community would be lacking and without whose gift our society would be deprived of the wonderful music expressed by their expertise. Their achievements continue to set a high bar for future generations of media composers and songwriters.”

Elliot Lawrence, longtime music director for the Tony Awards.

Best-known for his prolific collaborations with writer-director Spike Lee, most recently on BlacKKKlansman, composer and trumpeter Blanchard has powerfully captured musical profiles for painful American tragedies, past and present. The true story of a black police officer who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with the help of a Jewish surrogate, BlacKKKlansman stars John David Washington, Adam Driver and Topher Grace. Other Spike Lee Joint productions that have benefited from Blanchard’s deft touch include the documentary When the Levees Broke, about Blanchard’s hometown of New Orleans during the devastation from Hurricane Katrina to the epic Malcolm X; Inside Man starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster; and 25th Hour (Golden Globe Nominee) starring Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Some of Blanchard’s other film credits include Black or White starring Kevin Costner and directed by Mike Binder; the Kasi Lemmons’ films, Talk to Me starring Don Cheadle and Chwitel Ejifor and Eve’s Bayou; George Lucas’ Red Tails; and Tim Story’s Barbershop. With his newest Blue Note jazz album, Live, Blanchard addresses the staggering cyclical epidemic of gun violence in this country. He delivers seven forceful songs recorded live in concert that both reflect the bitter frustration of the conscious masses while also providing a balm of emotional healing. With a title that carries a pointed double meaning, the album is an impassioned continuation of the band’s Grammy-nominated 2015 studio recording, Breathless.

Composer John Corigliano

Multi award-winning composer John Corigliano continues to add to one of the most widely celebrated bodies of over the last forty years. Corigliano received the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1999 for The Red Violin; other film scores include Altered States and Revolution. A prolific composer of concert music, including over one hundred chamber, vocal, choral, and orchestral works—have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. His 1991 opera Ghosts of Versailles was the Metropolitan Opera’s first commission in three decades. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Grawemeyer Award, and four Grammy Awards. Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which has established a scholarship in his name.

Elliot Lawrence is an American jazz pianist as well as a composer and conductor of film music. The son of broadcast pioneer Stan Lee Broza, he led his own big bands with such labels as Columbia and Decca until 1960. Afterwards he worked as a composer and musical director for approximately thirty films and numerous theater productions on Broadway. He was twice nominated for Broadway’s Tony Award as Best Conductor and Musical Director in 1961 for Bye, Bye Birdie and in 1962 for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Among his many television credits, Elliot was the musical director and conductor for every Tony Award telecast from 1965 (its first year on T.V) to 2011. Other big gala shows include Night of the 100 Stars 1 (1982) and 2 (1985), the Bicentennial Celebration for the Statue of Liberty (1986 at Giants Stadium) and The Kennedy Center Honors (from 2000–2006C). Elliot’s scoring credits include the television shows As The World Turns, Search for Tomorrow, and Edge of Night, as well as the feature film Network. As a musical director he has won 9 Emmy awards for musical direction and been nominated for many others.

The Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) is a non-profit and primary organization for professional film, television, video game, and musical theater composers and lyricists, and those working in our industry such as orchestrators, arrangers, music supervisors, music agents, music attorneys, music editors, copyists, recording engineers, and related jobs, with a distinguished 70-year history in the fine art of creating music for visual media. Current SCL Members include the top creative professionals whose experience and expertise is focused on many of the creative, technological, legal, newsworthy and pressing issues of the film music, television music, game music, and musical theatre industry today.

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SCL website: www.TheSCL.com
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